In the wake of the BLM protests, many school heads are rushing for help to find resources which accord with contested and divisive ideas from Critical Race Theory, including the now ubiquitous ‘white privilege’. There are a growing number of diversity ‘expert’ businesses willing to help. Heads should reject this course of action and remember their public duty to ensure a politically neutral context for educating the young argues Calvin Robinson at The Telegraph:
The idea that one may be racist without knowing it is particularly pernicious, yet anyone challenging the idea may be dismissed as simply expressing “white privilege”. It’s a cheap intellectual trap designed to fleece the naive. Unfortunately, schools are hiring these snake-oil salesmen to provide continued professional development.
While most of these measures, from curriculum alterations to teacher training, are no doubt put in place by well-intentioned heads wanting to be seen to be doing the right thing, they risk stoking up racial tensions where there were little or none to begin with, causing potentially long-term harm to vulnerable young people. Schools could also breach the 1996 Education Act by failing to maintain political neutrality.